Fun with statistics

Top 10 search phrases for retrophisch.com for the first three days of September: 1. powerbook skin 2. definition of a liberal 3. sweet 4. conservative democrats 5. disassemble ipod 6. blaser r93 lrs2 7. barney cam 8. lsu tiger stadium 9. apple powerbook g4 12 10. powerbook benchmarks


Browse happy

The Web Standards Project has started a new campaign, called Browse Happy, as an attempt to get people to switch from the unsafe, non-pop-up ad blocking, inherently security unconscious, Internet Explorer. I recently installed Firefox on to my wife's PC, and showed her how it blocks the pop-up ads that annoy her with IE usage. It was a snap to install, and it brought over all of her bookmarks, preferences, etc. from IE. Not to mention that Safari, Camino, Firefox, and Mozilla all tend to be more standards-supporting than IE. Do yourself a favor and find an alternate browser. Do web developers everywhere a favor and find an alternate browser, so we don't have to keep coding for more than one type. (I'm looking at you, Internet Explorer.)


100 Million Songs

Apple's iTunes Music Store has broken the 100 million-song barrier.


Blogger schwag

I'm still shaking my head over this one. I suppose it's only a matter of time before someone comes up with Texas blogger schwag. (No, it won't be me.) (With a nod to David)


Yes, comments

Comments are back, so Chris P., you can now comment on my GarageBand-created track. The solution? Turns out I had a blank line in my Movable Type banned IP list for retrophisch.com. This was blocking all IPs from posting. Deleted the blank, rebuilt the site just for good measure, and happy comment spamming days are here again. Thanks to the many posters in the Movable Type Support Forums for commenting on their own comment problems. One of those forum members pointed me to the solution.


No comments?

For some reason, no one is able to post comments at the moment. Not even myself. "You do not have permission..." It is under investigation.


On wish lists and recommendations

Why is it that Amazon.com's recommendation system isn't smart enough to figure out that it doesn't need to recommend something to me that's already in my wish list?


Gmail privacy concerns

Declan McCullagh discusses his reservations about Google's in-private-beta Gmail system. His privacy concerns are well-founded, but I'm sure a lot of people are willing to give up a bit of privacy for something that would have as much perceived value as a free gig of e-mail space. Should Gmail open to the public as is, I can still see myself signing up for it, though my usage of it would be limited to a certain scope. In other words, I would be my own privacy protection, and that may be the best users can hope for.


Buttoned up

So looking at Lee's setup had me thinking that my blog could use a little more color, so I jumped on the button bandwagon. You can see my own button-mania in the link section to the left. Huge kudos and thanks to my favorite code babe, Raena, for the buttons for my own web sites, as well as the buttons for Michael's SpamSieve, ATPM, John Gruber's Markdown, and Darwin. Feel free to steal and use on your own sites.


Just say no to Internet taxes

No taxes on Internet access (in the U.S.) is something I believe even the left-minded of my geek brethren would agree is a good thing. From the 04-10 Digest of The Federalist: bq. In the Senate, current legislation intended to extend the moratorium on Internet-access taxes remains stalled in the Senate. Apparently deciding that the free exchange of goods and services on the Internet has been doing a bit too well on its own, some in the government feel that nagging urge to tax. We would again remind our representatives in Washington of the effects of new taxes: lower GDP, higher unemployment, and lower disposable income. It seems to be lost on some Swampsters that money doesn't fall off trees. Wealth must be created. Increasing the cost of Internet access and thereby stifling a large sector of the economy is not the way to increase revenues. In many ways, the Internet is a symbol of the success of a free-market economy; its freedom ought to be jealously guarded. I encourage you to seek out your Senators and voice your opinion. (Which hopefully is one of no Internet taxation!)


Marginalizing IE

The Mac Marginalization report at MacInTouch has seen a spurt of activity in recent days, notably about certain web sites not working with Safari or other non-IE browsers. In today's postings, MacInTouch reader "Steve" suggests:

Safari users often are subjected to annoying web page redirection to inform them that their browser is not supported. Microsoft's subversion of web standards deserves a similar tactic: "Your browser does not adhere to international web standards. Please contact Microsoft support to request standards compliance so that we can provide a better web experience for everyone. You will be redirected to our non-standard pages momentarily..."

If every web page handled MSIE this way, the stream of customer support inquiries might eventually annoy Microsoft enough that they would clean up their act. While I highly doubt the latter would ever happen, it is amusing to consider the former nonetheless. Windoze users reading this, and other web standards-composing web sites, would do well to look to Firefox/Mozilla.


On browser window size

I wholeheartedly agree with Lee. And the n3rdling tells us in the comments that Firefox has a pref to prevent this occurrence from happening. I hope this is something Dave & Co. can cook in to a future rev of Safari.


Clean RSS 2.0 from MT

I don't think anyone's not going to cop to the fact that as great as Movable Type is, its RSS 2.0 templates fairly suck. I took up Steven Frank's challenge to improve my RSS feeds, and used a template provided by Horst Prillinger. I'm now using the RSS 2.0 feeds for all of my sites in my preferred RSS aggregator, and would appreciate feedback from any non-NetNewsWire-using readers out there.


2004 March of Dimes WalkAmerica

Next month, my wife will be leading her firm at the annual March of Dimes WalkAmerica in Dallas. She has registered to raise money for the event, and we're asking for donations, which you can contribute by going to the web site set up just for her: http://www.walkamerica.org/KLTTX. Our son, now a healthy 7-month old, was born 9 weeks premature and spent 6 weeks in the Neonatal ICU. During that time, we witnessed the good things done by the March of Dimes first hand. We'd appreciate any support you can give to this great event. Thanks!


Second Initial

Lee has suspended blogging at dtpbylee.com, and has opened Second Initial. He has a kick-butt layout thanks to our favorite code babe, Raena, and guessing is now open on the significance of the domain name. Congrats, my friend!


Archives updated

So in the course of waiting on a myriad of things to happen at work today, I decided to get off my duff and fix up the main archives page the way I had been wanting to. Mucho gracias to my amigos, Michael, Raena, and Michael, for the coding assistance.


Google your flight info

Last month, Aaron Swartz noted some new features of Google, a few I was not aware of. Is it any wonder that Apple has a Google search field built right in to Safari?


Overhauling the overhaul

In an endeavor to fully separate the personal from the tech talk, per the rejection of my Google AdSense application, consider this the formal announcement of the re-opening of my original weblog, digitalpembroke. The process for moving over all photo albums, reading lists, etc. is in progress. Yes, Michael, I am quite insane.


Overhaul

If you've actually been hitting the site over the past couple of days rather than reading posts via RSS feeds, you will have noticed the new look. To go along with the new look is something of a new mandate I gave myself. Retrophisch refocuses its coverage on the Mac world and technology in general, with a few bits of personal fun, like my observations on college football (Geaux Tigers!) and hockey, thrown in. From this point forward, I'm shifting the following topics to respective blogs:

All sites carry a common layout that identifies them as the Retrophisch Family of Blogs™, and all of the above sites link to the others. There may be some crossover posting, going on, as religious liberties might well be discussed on both Godblog and Ludichris, just as firearms freedoms could be discussed on both Ludichris and Forty Caliber. But for the most part, each will remain distinct from the others. I wanted to do this both for myself and those of you kind enough to frequent my site. I have felt that perhaps I was trying to cover too much in one site, and, heck, I've had the domains just sitting around waiting to be used. I must send out major thanks to Raena for her invaluable assistance in getting the backend code tweaked and the CSS working right. Thanks also to Jon, Lee, Michael, and anyone else I may have bugged over the past few months about taking a look and helping me with items that were wrong. Errors in the content are purely my own. I'm still working on code for some of the auxiliary pages, so, yes, I know the Photos and Read pages don't share the same layout. I likely won't touch the Photo albums until the Trotts & Co. release Movable Type Pro, which will feature photo album creation. (Yes, I know about Gallery and myriad other such products, but I've issues with trying to get them to work, and I can only guess how well the whole album thing will work in MT Pro, so I'm content to wait.) Comments on the new look are welcome and appreciated, as are any bug reports readers may feel necessary.


Jim and Lissa

My friends Jim and Lissa have gone live with their new site, appropriately titled, Jim and Lissa. I'm going to miss seeing Jim at work each day, but at least there's AIM. Congrats, you two. You are welcome to pool, and the pool, any time.